On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:28:47 -0800, Ben Curtis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > These are smart people I'm working with, but they think solely about > presentation. I'm looking to push them on just the right concepts. Did > I miss any? Am I off base on some?
I started doing exactly what you're trying to do about 18 months ago, albeit with a smaller team (I think there were about four coders back then). I am pleased to say that now, we are a fully standards-compliant shop and nothing new goes out the door that doesn't validate and have basic accessibility measures. New hires are vetted extensively for their attitude towards web standards - even the designers who don't actually write any HTML are expected to be aware of the issues. However, it's a slow process. I'd say it took about a year to get everyone thinking in the right way - and that meant lots of "transitional" table-based layouts and pages that didn't quite make the grade went out the door. You have to be very careful, as pushing the validation issue especially when someone's already under pressure can turn them against the whole idea very easily. I found that I needed to be around to help out with browser issues a lot - at first the attitude to layout problems very much is "it works fine *my way*... if you want it *your* way, you'd better come up with a fix yourself". After a while though that goes away as people get more empowered with what they're doing. I recommend buying a few books to have around - my copy of Zeldman's book in particular has been around the office a few times, in fact I haven't even laid eyes on it since October. As for your document, if search engine optimisation is important in your work at all that's a great way to explain the importance of semantic markup - Google sees "<span class="heading">Widgets</span>" and says "yep, some text". Google sees "<h1>Widgets</h1>" and says "aha! I've found a page exclusively about Widgets!". Another important thing is to demonstrate tools that will make their lives easier like the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar and the htmlhelp.com crawling validator, and make sure everyone knows how to get them and how to install them. Good luck! -- Kay Smoljak http://kay.smoljak.com/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
